


A Shadow's Lullaby

by ShyWitchling



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Infanticide, Minor Character Death, Music, No Beta, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 14:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19889707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShyWitchling/pseuds/ShyWitchling
Summary: The White Lady makes her ultimate decision, unknowing of her lullaby's significance.





	A Shadow's Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> I present my first ever posted Fanfiction! I finally plucked up the courage to post something. ^_^
> 
> Important things to note:  
> -Possible Spoilers for the game Hollow Knight's story and locations, such as White Palace Secret rooms and the Tower of Love.  
> -The Knight has not collected the Void Heart yet in this story.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

_Higher Being of Root, these words are for you and for you alone._

In union to my dearest Wyrm, in the formation of our soul shared, we made an oath bound by seals unbreakable. Promises of protection through a once immortal charm proven, upmost loyalty and devotion for one another alongside the kingdom we foster proudly. A kingdom of enlightened bugs, bugs we invited to follow us with the free will of choice. A nest we pledged the first and the last through our hallowed focus: my dearest’s beacon of light, and my careful guidance for those seeking, all in the effort for our new family to be free in thought, creative in mind, understanding in heart, and upmost _eternal_ in nature.

Though I am not proud of my role in our grand kingdom’s recent stained history, to save it from being cast aflame by an archaic enemy, I would never undo what I have done. Though both our actions are ultimately selfish in nature, I longed for a future free of that evil blaze, free for my family that I vowed to protect. I followed my oath, my duty to my kingdom and my King. If that cruel blaze were I, it’d see my actions as self-sacrifice; they are not. In that saddened acceptance of truth alone my moral compass is proven clearer. I know what I have done, why it was done, and the betterment of my people for it.

Despite it all, it is still a painful memory to recall.

Unspoken to my dearest, there was doubt that day. Anger even, I dare say. I care for all my children! I gave myself for them to grow until I let them ride the lost breeze in hopes of finding their own pathways to enlightenment and meaning. To deliver them to the world through a union so holy, then to cast them away... To drown them in the effort to wash away the violent blaze threatening our Kingdom’s very being. It had to be done; the blaze would have destroyed the haven we built so all could see with their own eyes. I knew why it had to be done, yet still... My nature torn from my oath; my mind split, I was at war with myself. I felt I couldn’t possibly agree to choose one child over another, but a decision was eventually made final.

It is with a weary gaze I look to my darling’s precious mistake in resentful understanding, with a sorrowful dark humour I saw him grow attached to a ghost day after day. I saw the unforgivable sin against my spawn I worried I’d commit in time, to love their non-living corpses. That soulless void that devoured them. But I continue to stand valiantly against such feelings, where I see my Wyrm has now slithered and suffered silently. My bright love, my heart; I mourn for our future in kind. What could have been I have dreamt of often, yet I know you will refuse to hear of it. A kingdom without a blazing fire to worry over, instead a swarm of little ones for us to grow fond of. Hundreds of skittering steps in our palace growing louder with each passing day. Many little ones for you to love without faulter and make into brave noble young knights. What could have been… I felt it those days where it was still possible. I saw it all burn, cast out away from our grasp that day.

What could have been was wonderful while it lasted.

I sat in that small room from their conception to their departure. Surely my back was engraved into the seat! But I could not leave them be, selfishness again consuming me. My presence was surely a cruel trick, an illusion of their future to come. I could not help myself. I had to be with them. I made certain that the room was comfortable, white light shining yet not blinding, the pale shimmering leaves dangling from the ceiling twirling in the air like watchful guardian ghosts. The light sweet perfume of lemonade flowed around the room, waltzing alongside my own earthy aroma.

I sang to them softly. The palace has always been so quiet, too quiet for any little one to live happily. It recalls dear departed Lurien’s reports of the City, where children played noisily in the music of soothing rainfall. I wish my little ones could have seen it, could have played there as well. In the palace the smallest wandering whisper echoed throughout the shimmering leafy halls, most certainly my song did as such. My Pale King will not tell me if he heard the melody. Saying so, I do not recall if he was on his throne above us or cast far off, buried in his darkened workshop far below out of sight from our ever-loyal court. I was not giving his presence any mind to truly notice, our shared soul for a rare moment was torn and blind to each half. My focus was solely on my spawn. The palace around that room was nothing but ash to me. That crib was the only beacon of light for a time.

They resembled you perfectly, my dear Wyrm. Higher beings, so bright in their pure shells, all unique in shape, yet all so small in stature. Hundreds of them in one tiny crib, all snuggling against one another beneath a soft blanket of flower petals, warm, safe, dreaming what of I wish I knew. I hope they heard my melody.

Then the void creature came. It silently held my babies in it’s four arms, the basket firm and steady with such disgusting cruel gentleness. It’s two blinding white eyes were wide, whether firm with the duty entrusted to it or with no feeling at all I could not say. A being in the shape of those Kingsmoulds my King wields yet separate from them. I had not seen it before and I have not seen the being since, fortunately for us both I suppose. Perhaps my dearest knowingly disposed of it. I wonder if it was even aware of itself. If such, what did it think of its own actions alongside mine? To have creatures in their likeness forged from the sacrifice of my children’s futures, the reanimation of their bodies with that cursed inky substance that made up their being, was it proud of what was done? Was it happy for this evil act of infanticide? I don’t believe they truly knew what was going to become of the little ones, yet still I wanted to destroy them where they stood in that moment. I can faithfully say the sentiment is still alive even now. 

That room has since been sealed away by a heavy steel door, guarded by the strongest seal those distant spiders claim they can weave. I made sure of it that day the minute the little ones left my side. I will not allow myself to enter such a sacred place, nor any other being for that matter. It is far purer than us all and shall not be tainted by our evil.

Feelings now realised; in my pain I have decided I can stay in this palace no longer. I am drowning in evil, consumed with this grief, this horrid violation, this infidelity to my natural duty as a mother. And now I want to atone for my lost ones. A desire burns within me, my own bitter plague to bare, so a pilgrimage I must endure. I do not regret what horrid role I played, for my kingdom shall thrive now free from fire, my oath fulfilled, but I shall not grant myself the pleasure of my own cursed nature in celebration. I will cease to breed and dim my glow as a higher being. I wish I had no ill feeling towards my beloved home, my shining palace, I will happily guide any who seek me in earnest need, but my home has been tainted by my own hand, so to my garden I shall retreat. No child deserves a mother so cruel as to drown them when they are only just born, no matter how sweet a melody she sings for them.

_\- From the Queen’s private memoirs._

-XxX-

Muffled giggling alongside the sounds of a grub squirming fills the air when the Knight is aware of their surroundings again. A hall stretches in front of them. Dull pink shades of paint rot and cushiony surfaces peel slowly off the walls, as the stench of dampness smothers everything like a protective animal’s turf. Faint imprints of once settled furniture long since removed are decorated like floating patches of light on every surface. In their stead, an army of empty glass cases fill the room. From every single corner, the floor is covered, shelves brimming, a few even dangling precariously from the ceiling like an overgrown forest of glass. Stepping cautiously further into the hall, the Knight sees some cases containing corpses of bugs and other familiar small creatures fought before in the grounds far above. A few vengefly’s flutter with irregular wingbeats in their cages, barely alive with eager snapping jaws and thinning bodies. The plague is the sole energy keeping them alive it seems. Other cages held the fading bodies of crawlids and obbles, long since deceased on their backs. Most of the cages are empty and polished.

 _A long hall filled with empty glass cages with the sounds of mad giggling_ -!

The Knight remembers where they are; they found the key to this place, this strange tower, in the Queens Gardens on a corpse of a bug hidden far from the main path. The bug was dressed strangely, looking displaced with the pink clothing only seen on the mindless bugs of the City of Tears. More striking, the Knight saw streaks of a black inky substance, a familiar substance to their own body they realised, dripping from their empty eye sockets. Intrigued and filled with hopeful dread, they decided to explore the City some more, excited for an excuse to adventure there once again. They enjoyed the pattering of rain on the ceilings and windows like music. They had listened for longer than they should have. The feel of the rain on their shell was comforting. Despite their time, they concluded they must have missed something important. They came unprepared for a fight and-

Then they hear it.

The melody.

It pulls on their body like invisible guiding hands, pulling them along the path insentiently and they run down the hall with purpose. They _need_ to hear it clearer, _closer_. That melody; it is the one thing that truly belongs to them. It _is_ them. The bugs of Hallownest who survived had their names, their homes, their true sense of self and their determined meaning in life. This melody; it was all they had of any of that.

The melody becomes clearer and they find what they knew would be there. Their own shadow stares at them from within a glass cage, white eyes wide yet unseeing in the mass of restless blackness that made up their being. The knight slowly steps closer, and closer, until there is only a wall of glass separating them like a mirror. It could not attack the Knight, trapped within this case on display for everyone curious. They could finally see each other without the clashing of nail on blackness. The Knight didn’t understand it, this tug on their being. The shadow was formless, yet physical; like water frozen into a body. They had no smell. They made little noise, which was muffled heavily as if drowned beneath a lake.

That melody though, it followed this shadow like a ghost itself, the melody the Knight needed to hear, to think clearly, to _think at all_! They had no memory when far apart from this shadow that sang that song. They could not truly focus their thoughts without it. They were lost without it. That melody is the soothing hands hugging their very being, their sense of self awoken with its touch. They were aware of themselves. They could focus and think things. They can _feel things_!

Their channelled Nail gripped; the Knight quickly smashes the glass.

**Author's Note:**

> Alrighty, show over!  
> I hope you enjoyed my fanfiction! :D
> 
> While this is my first posted Fanfiction and completely un-beta read, helpful criticism would be welcome!  
> Let me know if I should tag something differently and such please, I am very new to this.  
> Thank you so much for reading and have an amazing day!


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